Where does the word “Slogan” come from and What does Slogan mean in Gaelic?

June 1, 2014 by Karen Hill | Filed Under: Language

It is very unlikely that advertising copywriters, who must spend many sleepless nights trying to devise catchy phrases to describe their wares, realize that the resulting slogans are direct descendants of ancient Gaelic battle cries.

But the original was just that, for the origin of slogan is sluagh-ghairm, literally, “the cry of the host,” from the Gaelic words sluagh, “host,” and gairm, “a cry or shout.”

For the most part, these battle cries consisted chiefly or solely of the name of the clan or of the leader of the host, repeated over and over by the body of soldiers, in unison, as they moved into battle.

This part of the technique, at least, is retained by today’s slogan writers, who try, if it all possible, to work the name of their product into their phrases.